Icing on surfaces can cause serious problems. On airplanes it can increase drag and weight while decreasing lift and thrust. In the worst situations, it can cause planes to crash. No less problematic, plane takeoffs for passenger planes and other types of planes are frequently delayed from taking off while the planes are de-iced. Plane delays cost the US economy 32.9 billion dollars a year. The plane can also stall at a lower angle of attack and a higher air speed. From 2006 to 2010, it has been reported that at least 228 airplane accidents took place that were related to issues related to icing of airplane surfaces.
Icing on other surfaces such as on pipelines causes other multiple problems. Pipes can crack as they experience temperature changes due to freeze/thaw cycles. The decrease in internal pipe temperature caused by icing can also cause a decrease in flow rate within the pipe, as well as cause the pipe to crack if the internal substance expands due to the decrease in temperature.
For airplanes in flight, several methods exist to remove or prevent ice formation. Conventional techniques for removing ice formation involves using air from the airplane engine, whereby the airplane engine air can be bled into ducting along wings and other areas with the hot air increasing the temperature of the iced area. Ice can be removed also by inflatable physical boots that knock frozen ice off wings. Other conventional techniques include anti-ice chemicals that can be slowly released onto the wing in a weeping wing system. Finally, electrical energy can be used to directly heat up wings or other areas to prevent or remove ice.
Recently, various new chemical composites including some that use carbon nanotubes, have been suggested to improve on ice prevention or removal. The use of these chemical composites remove the need for complicated inflatable boot systems, remove the need to continually release chemicals as in weeping systems, and allow more ice to be removed with less power usage than pure electrical energy systems.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,752,279 describes using a thermally conductive film containing hexagonal boron nitride that can be heated with an electrical heater. U.S. Pat. No. 8,931,740 describes a method of using carbon nanotubes with two different conductivities underneath wings one that provides a heating conductor and one that provides a heating element. U.S Patent Application No. 2012/0082806 describes the use of carbon nanotubes as a coating that allows electricity to be used to heat an entirety of a surface. The coating is sprayed on the surface to be coated. Various other patents disclose the use of carbon nanotubes in laminated resistive heaters.
Each of these approaches suffer from various problems. Hexagonal boron nitride disclosed in the '279 patent is a complicated chemical formation that requires the use of heavy metals which have been known to have negative environmental effects. The '740 patent discloses an overly difficult process which requires the use of complicated nanotube formations with different electrical conductivities. U.S Patent Application No. 2012/0082806 discloses spraying a de-icing coating on the surface, but the type of coating disclosed is likely to decrease the aerodynamics of the plane and thus increase fuel usage.
Thus, there is a need for a system and method for anti-icing and de-icing that overcomes these and the many other shortcomings of conventionally available techniques.